Category: Digital Art

Art student Jon Shimizu shared with us his experience printing on the inkjet Asuka papers for his book project, and how much he loved working with them. Below is Jon’s artist statement. Thank you, Jon!

(We always appreciate any feedback about the papers, so please let us know!)

Brazil-based artist Elinor Cotaithas been using the Asuka inkjet coated paper for her beautiful imagery. I had the pleasure of meeting her a few months ago when she visited our store, all the way from Brazil. We began to talk about her works on Asuka paper, and I loved how her subtle photographic images looked on the Asuka paper!

Árvores 2, 2014

A few words from Elinor:
“In 2012, visiting friends in LA, I spent some time at Bergamot Station Art Center and then discovered Hiromi Paper, where I found myself in an entire new word of possibilities. At the time, I was working in a series of photographs characterized by soft forms and pastel colors. My idea was to share through it a very abstract, subtle view of the landscape. However, I tried all kind of papers to print and never achieves what I had in mind.

That is when I found coated washi paper at Hiromi Paper. Not only one kind or size, but several! I brought some options home [to Brazil] and in the very first trial I finally saw something that was real only in my mind becoming real on paper too.

Nowadays, I am a member of Hiromi Paper, and four series of my photos are based on their washi paper. Currently I am working on a photo book that hopefully will be printed on washi paper too.”

I had the pleasure of visiting Poehlman Press, a fine-art printing studio in Downtown Los Angeles. Jalal Poehlman, artist and founder of Poehlman Press, works closely with each individual for every printing job. His clientele ranges from artists around the world, galleries, photographers, exclusive hotels, casinos, and more, many of which continuously come back for multiple projects. Some of his favorite projects include photographer Hannah Collins for the Ford Foundation and John Baldessari in 2002. Jalal showed me around his printing studio and a few of his wonderful prints. He also shared some insight on printing with paper and profiles. This led into a collaboration project we are working on with Jalal to print on washi for people to see at our retail location. Here is a little Q&A with Jalal Poehlman on printing:

How did you get into the profession of printing?

As an art student in the 90s, I became interested in ways to output digitally created artwork. After reading Walter Benjamin’s 1936 essay, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproducibility”, I became fascinated by the potential of reaching a larger and more diverse audience through digital and mechanical reproduction. At that time, there was only one type of printer that came close to producing similar image quality of a traditionally exposed color photograph. That printer was the venerable IRIS inkjet printer, which had the unique advantage of the ability to make those prints on a large variety of art papers, including washi. Very few people had done the engineering necessary to convert these $126,000 complex and finicky pre-press proofing systems to produce fine art. One of those pioneers is a man named Jack Duganne who is the owner and master print maker at Duganne Ateliers in Santa Monica. After leaving graduate school and landing in Los Angeles I asked around about who was doing the best digital printmaking in Los Angeles and I was told a number of times that it was Jack Duganne. Because I could not otherwise afford to learn and use the technology I needed in order to produce my artwork I knocked on Jack’s door and asked him for a job. Jack is a great teacher and lovely human being and 15 years later and with much thanks to him here I am.

What are some differences with printing on washi compared to other paper?

Washi papers offer much more variety of texture, weight, tone and color as compared to other papers and especially to other fine art quality inkjet papers. Washi papers also tend to be much stronger than western cotton papers and like gampi for example, can remain strong as a very thin and translucent material.

Lastly, do you have any advice or tips with printing on washi for people?

Ideally when printing fine art and photography, custom profiling including sophisticated ink-limiting and linearisation should be performed for each ink/paper/resolution combination. When that is done, the maximum imaging potential of each paper is achieved. I use professional profiling hardware and software as well as a third party RIP to maximize print quality and accuracy.

Short of the professional approach, I have a few tips for printing washi on a high quality inkjet printer such as offered by HP, Canon, and Epson. Generally, the brighter white the paper is, the better color and contrast you will be able to achieve. Ironically, the dominant inkjet printer technology is Japanese and I have never seen a washi printing preset in any print drivers. Perhaps that is because of the huge variety of hand and machine made washi papers available. The paper settings in your print driver among other things controls the amount of ink that is allowed to go onto the paper. Coated washi papers can accept more ink than uncoated papers, they will give the best results. Experiment with fine art paper settings when using coated washi paper. When using uncoated papers, I’ve found that picking a plain paper setting often works best. When an image doesn’t come out as brilliantly as we want sometimes the first instinct is to lay down more ink. Quite often we are overloading the paper giving us muddy looking prints. Better results may be obtained from laying down less ink.

This is an especially interesting collaboration for Hiromi Paper as well, because when Jennifer had been searching for a local bookbinder, we were the ones that first recommended George at The Fire Monkey; whom we’ve had a close relationship with for many years. We are so glad this collaboration worked out, and together they created such a wonderful book!

He will also be teaching his technique at a workshop after the conference at the Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill.
Wayne has developed a unique method of using color separated images that are screen printed on separate sheets of Tengucho.
The individual colors are then layered with wax to complete the image.

For more information see the link below and look for the workshop titled “Digital color separation and encaustic workshop”.

A couple of days ago, Yuki and I had the pleasure to visit the studio of Angeles Press, which was only a 5 minute car ride away from Hiromi Paper! We were immediately greeted with prints done on our paper such as Niyodo White, as pictured above, and on the KM-03 Surface Gampi White, which was deemed as a favorite, and can be seen below.

Photography, editing, and printing by Mary Michel on KM-03.

Angeles Press has been around for over 30 years and is now focusing in the digital field. Mary and Toby work intimately with clients on their projects to meet their every needs, whether it is for just a single print or editions. It was amazing to be able to experience how they transform images, some were even taken by smart phone’s, in to physical art work. We were able to work with them on printing with various Japanese and Bhutanese paper’s, which is just a sliver of what they are capable of printing on.

Painting by Victoria Sutherland, printed on Asuka 150g 17″x22″.From Victoria Sutherland. Printed on HP-61 Okawara Small.Image taken by Trisha O’Keefe, “White Egret”. Print on top with an Epson paper, bottom with MM-23 Shirakabe.

For the first conference of the year, Yona and I drove up to Richmond, CA for the CODEX International Book Fair 2013 held from February 10th – 13th.
We experienced beautiful weather for the duration of the conference, and the new venue, the beautiful waterfront Craneway Pavilion was filled with light and exuberance from the visitors and exhibitors.

Being able to meet and talk to our customers is always a wonderful feeling, and this particular conference was an opportunity to do just that, as well as discover new customers that love using our papers. Here are some of whom we were able to meet; my sincere apologies to those we missed…. Continue reading “CODEX International Book Fair Report”